All Manner Of Workings
by ConquisteloCait
Summary: Sherlock crosses an uncomfortable line during experimentation.   Written for the prompt 'Vivisection' from Kay the Cricketed.   Spoilers: Nothing major, but takes place after Season 2, episode 2.


Title: "**All Manner of Workings"**

Author: ConquisteloCait

Fandom: Sherlock, BBC

Prompt: "Vivisection" – a prompt offered by Kay_the_Cricketed

Pairing: Gen, Pre-Slash (Sherlock/John)

Word Count: 1,855

Spoilers: Nothing major, but takes place after Season 2, episode 2.

Description: Sherlock crosses an uncomfortable line during experimentation

The first time Sherlock performs a dissection, he is five years old and on holiday in Blackpool. His mum is sunbathing, and Mycroft is reading under the umbrella their father has set up. Sherlock has crawled away from the trio (he cannot remember his father, just the umbrella) and is sitting on the damp sand, just shy of the break. He is bored, and digging holes that just as quickly fill themselves back in. On occasion, he is lucky enough to find a periwinkle that still shows the clear flesh of an animal before it sucks itself inside. He traps them in cupped hands, lets the next wave wash away the sand, and is left with the polished shell. He holds them up to the sunlight and is frustrated when he cannot see the animal within. He entertains the notion of prying it open, to see what they look like altogether. Though he briefly searches for something to do the job, eventually he becomes mindful of the time it has spent out of water, and eventually lowers it back into the sand. With the next wave, it is gone.

Shortly thereafter, he finds a dead bee in a tidepool. He has no qualms about this one and carefully places the little body, beading water on its useless fuzz, on the sand in front of him. He picks the legs off one by one, and uses the sharp end of a shell to separate head from body, antennae from head, until his mum wakes up and realizes that he's been in the sun too long, pale skin gone red and tender, and she makes him sit by his brother for the rest of the afternoon.

The second time it happens out of self defense. He is twelve, his mum is working, and the boys have gone straight to their elderly neighbor's house after school. Mrs. Haberfore is watching telly, meaning that for all purposes, she is dead to the world for the remainder of the programme. Usually, Mycroft is attending to his homework, taking the care to finish it with painstaking elegance and organization. Sherlock has finished his this half-hour past, scrawling script and disinterest. _If a train leaves London at 9:00 pm, and is travelling x km per hour, and another train is leaving Blythe one hour prior – _

_Nothing of interest would occur, _he had written. _There is no railway station in Blythe. _

Bored and hungry, Sherlock wanders into the kitchen to see if Mrs. Haberfore has set out an after-homework snack, or if she has forgotten and he will have to raid her cabinets himself. He finds the table empty, and is preoccupied with finding something sturdy to climb on when he hears a strange rattling at the back door. It is an uncharacteristically sunny spring day, and Mrs. Haberfore has left the door open. When Sherlock peers at it, the door rattles again and this time, it is accompanied by a strange and muffled sound that he cannot identify. He puts his stool away and steps outside.

On the corner of the stoop, partially obscured by hedges, is a tiny calico kitten with blinking, fussy eyes. It is dusty and haggard-looking, and as soon as it sees Sherlock, makes a plaintive sound that has him magnetically reaching to pick it up.

"Don't," Mycroft warns behind him, appearing in that silent, unnerving way that he has. "Wait, Sherlock. Look at his legs."

The back legs are all but crushed, and the pitiful little creature is paralyzed.

"Her," Sherlock quietly corrects. "Calicoes are statistically female."

Mycroft has a hand on Sherlock's shoulder, as much restraining him as attempting comfort. "There isn't anything you can do for it now. Best walk away."

But Sherlock can't quite bring himself to do that anyhow, not even when he realizes that the cat is bleeding from an internal wound. His best guess is that it was run over by something not quite large enough to be a big car. A mo-ped, maybe, or something of similar size. He doesn't even protest when Mycroft comes back with a cushion, and mumbles that they ought not to let it suffer.

Though he knows this to be fundamentally true, he cannot bring himself to suffocate the thing. Even that seems prolonged, and cruel. He strokes its head for another ten minutes, clearing the grit from its eyes until Mycroft finally leaves to finish attending his homework. It is only then that Sherlock wraps his hands around the thin little neck and snaps. The kitten goes limp in his lap, and he pets it as the warmth ebbs away.

Mycroft says nothing when he later finds Sherlock out by the shed, cutting open what remains of the legs with Mrs. Haberfore's best kitchen knife. On occasion, Sherlock makes a note in the margins of his school notebook – more than likely on his ill-finished arithmetic. Mycroft is calm. He knows that Sherlock is balming his wounds in the best way he knows how – by familiar truth of discovery.

He knows, because he has done much the same before.

When Sherlock is sixteen, he has performed more dissections in the school lab than he can keep record of. It is only a matter of time before he turns his interest to the workings of human cadavers. His professor at the time is an understanding but hesitant man, eager to further his student's unyielding and insatiable quest for information, but uncomfortable over the keenness to spend time with dead bodies. Still, he manages to pull some strings with colleagues at a nearby medical school, and shortly after winter holiday, Sherlock is invited to an autopsy for the very first time. It is like a second Christmas.

"Brilliant," he murmurs in appreciative awe the first time he cuts open a carotid artery. The mechanics of it, the precision, that all this messy flesh and gore can ultimately lead to a working, functioning thing! He turns away from the "why" questions. No time for metaphysics. He was only given an hour.

It is with great reluctance that he allows his professor to lead him away, right as he was separating an eyeball from the skull.

It isn't until he is in his early thirties that Sherlock Holmes performs a vivisection for the first time in his life. It is after he and John have returned from their experience in Dartmoor, rattled but otherwise elated. It had been a good case. A trying one, but he loved those best of all.

"You know I won't stop at one," John says conversationally, interrupting their companionable silence. John has been typing up the rough draft of the case – the "latest adventure," he romantically likes to call them – for his blog. Sherlock has been sprawled on their settee, balancing his feet on the table, cushioned by their Union Jack pillow. He is reading tabloids again, marking things of note in highlighter. John's comment comes at the tail end of a sentence about abducting women to impregnate them with alien seed. It takes Sherlock a disquieting moment to realize that these two things are a non-sequitur.

"How d'you mean?" he responds. In the course of their time as flatmates, Sherlock prides himself on giving leeway to John over things that John apparently finds invaluable. Sherlock's acknowledgement of his presence and the continuation of conversation, for example. It is, to him, a great deal of progress towards a modicum of "normalcy," and one he knows that John truly appreciates.

"Letting you make coffee. Or tea. Or whatever. Now you've started, you know I won't let you stop. And while we're at it, maybe we'll put my life in danger again so that you'll be goaded into rearranging the room."

The comment is lighthearted, but it gives Sherlock pause. He thinks back to how John's voice sounded when he had "rescued" him from the "Hound" –

"_Jesus Christ, it was the HOUND_ – _Sherlock – it was here. I swear it, Sherlock, i-it must – it must – di-di-did you see it? You must've!"_

"_It's alright. It's okay now."_

"_NO IT'S NOT!"_

It was the first time Sherlock had ever seen John Watson lose his cool. Shortly after they had met, John had shot a man without flinching. He had faced down death and murderers and drug dealers and his possible own demise by bomb with a solid efficacy and steadiness that Her Majesty would certainly be proud to know actually did exist in her forces. Yet this time, though it was at Sherlock's hand and under Sherlock's control, the force of John's fear had given him pause. Was it solely the drug? The allusion to possible fear under laboratory conditions, the hint of terror aggravated by artificial stimulation?

He flicks his gaze briefly over John. Encounter with a dog during childhood? Possible.

But the way his voice had hitched – had _stammered, _even –

"Sherlock?"

He blinks. John has been talking. "Apologies. I missed my chance to respond."

John laughs it off."Nice try. I'll spring it on you when you least expect it."

Conclusion: John's laugh is a more pleasant and settling sound that John's terror.

That night, John makes dinner. Sherlock helps cut vegetables, and John even refrains from criticizing their shape and unevenness.

"Pass me the pasta box," John says. Sherlock tosses, and John catches. They rarely have to look at each other anymore.

Conclusion: Familiarity breeds confidence. Or, they both have good reflexes. Possible side effect of war. Further study needed for affirmation.

Dinner is good. Sherlock manages to finish his entire bowl, and cannot help but remark that John looks pleased.

"It's just, despite my average mind, I suppose I'm at least an average or better cook. Plus, that's the most you've eaten in days. Maybe you'll actually put some weight on this time."

"Good Lord, I hope not." Sherlock makes a face. "However will I face Mycroft then?"

Again, John laughs. Observation: John is feeling more lighthearted and relaxed tonight. John's left hand is at ease. John is developing lines at the corners of his eyes, idiomatically referred to as "laugh lines" or "crow's feet." John's birthday is coming up.

Observation: Sherlock is more relaxed, too.

John has a tiny spot of mustard on the hem of his jacket. He smells of middle-grade cologne – obviously a gift from Harry. He is straightening his tie in front of the mirror, and has missed a spot below his chin while shaving. Ordinarily, Sherlock would tell him this, but John can be fastidious in his own way. He is clearing his throat more than usual. Tonight he has a date.

"Don't wait up," he calls casually. "Have a good evening."

Sherlock waits until the door is closed downstairs, and says "Your socks don't match" to the empty room.

The facts come whether he bids them to or not. That is not unusual, they always have. But how on Earth is he to find space for irreverent information such as "John isn't fond of Parcheesi" and "John looks best in blue?"

The vivisection lasts a while. He spends his days – consciously or not – dissecting John. John gets better at noticing, and seems pleased and flattered that Sherlock remembers little details, or makes an effort to clean the flat, or manages to pack away almost all of his dirty laundry AND the Tupperware full of eyeballs. Sherlock brushes it off, because frankly, vivisection has always been a step he'd rather not take. All of these messy details, mucking up what ought to be clean, immobile, and ready to yield. Living fluids, sounds and voice and things meeting eyes with you and breathing, ugh, _breathing. _

It's sickening. And for the life of him, he wishes he could stop.


End file.
